Look who picked up on the term "CheneyBurton" ... can the "1600 Crew"
be far behind?

Warms my heart, my little word has grown up and left home. [sniff]. And after I repaint its room it'll come home drunk one night with some piece of last-call trash and a marriage certificate. Then there'll be divorce, backstabbing and we'll all end up on Maury with a paternity test. My poor little word, it's all growed up and looking for a double-wide with low payments and new job. [sniff sniff]

Well, I have not seen as many "Memorial Day" sale fliers as in past years. Maybe as the dying continues in Iraq the sobering thought that Memorial Day is to remember those who served and died, and continue to give their lives for our country today is something to be honored, not a reason to offer 10% off on all merchandise.

I never talk about my blog, and that's not really my intent now, but I would like to say Thanks to all of you who stop by here everyday. Our little community is comprised of both Vets, some from WW Second, Korea, The Little Southeast Asian Story Hour, and of course us Cold-Warriors and non-Vets. You all are my inspiration for keepng the doors open and for that I salute you.

It's a good feeling to know that there are others with my background who see that our friends who both died in Hot Conflicts and Cold Wars aka "Peacetime" did not pay the ultimate price for naught. Our government still functions, the pride and dedication that they had is carried forward today by the men and women of our Armed Forces, who unfortunately are being led by a dyslexic, dry-drunk cowardly Momma's boy.

Every day I remember that we are united in our desire to see what has become the worst administration, and biggest embarrasment to our nation in history leave office in January.

I wish all of you a comforting and reflective Memorial Day. It's a day to remember our Comrades-in-Arms, and thank them for giving us our country.

To it's credit the Army has set up programs for soldiers returning from deployments to Iraq to help them to "decompress" for lack of a better term. It's an unintended consequence that the drunken Fratboy Coward and the NeoCon draft-dodgers never forsaw. A big "Bravo Zulu" to the Army for doing the right thing. A middle finger salute to the NeoCons for there ever having to be such a program.

At Fort Riley, this is the last stop before home for soldiers returning from Iraq. Mandatory "debriefs" like this one, to be conducted for thousands of soldiers in training rooms and auditoriums at bases across the country, are a novelty for the United States military. The sessions were begun in response to a spate of deaths at Fort Bragg, N.C., in 2002, when four soldiers were charged with killing their wives in unrelated cases. The sessions reflect the realization that for soldiers and their families, the burdens and sacrifices of deployment go far beyond fighting overseas and waiting at home.

As these re-entry sessions show, coping with war is a long-term struggle, a way of life, falling hardest on a sliver of American society: the men, women and children of the military class, hundreds of thousands of them, many clustered in and around bases like Fort Riley.

But it's not all sweetness and light for some soldiers who will get back to the world:

Christa Dannenberg, 20, had never lived alone until her husband, Staff Sgt. Robert Dannenberg, went to Iraq in March 2003, six months after they married. She had moved from her parents' home into his. Everything got so quiet when he left.

By the time he returned last July, Ms. Dannenberg had learned to handle the checkbook, to wake up in bed alone, to make friends. At first, she said, it was odd to have him back. "I had to initiate every conversation," Ms. Dannenberg said. "It was like he wasn't there. He wouldn't talk."

But they pushed through that, they said. They laugh about it now. "It was hard to deal with," she said.

Sergeant Dannenberg, 23, said he had not even noticed his own silence; it was all a blur. "I guess I just thought she had a lot to tell me," he said. "You get that way in the desert."

He said he hoped he and his wife would get to spend a full year together now, something they have yet to do as a couple.

Not long ago, Sergeant Dannenberg and 700 other soldiers were ordered to return to Iraq.

Daniel Okrent of the Times seems to get it "mostly right" to use his words. In what will undoubtedly become a weasel-word-phrase for print journalists of the future:

The failure was not individual, but institutional.

There is some mitigation in the fact that in this age of "always-on" news and information the urge to "get it first" might allow an occaisional mistake or two, but after being burned by Jayson Blair why would the editorial board of the Times not seek to correct past mistakes and do the right thing, ie practicing Responsible Journalism? They ought to start housecleaning by handing Miller her walking papers.

Okrents piece is worth a read, but expect no major changes from the Times; they are not going to stop being GOP Washington mouthpieces any time soon. At least until the after the election.

At least Okrent acknowledeges Miller is a problem. That's something.

John Warner of Virginia is one of those Republicans with a capital "R". He's like McCain, as conservative as the day is long, but not a kool-aid drinking fanatic. Sort of a throwback to the days before incivility. Well, now he's got the Chickenhawk Goopers all freaked out because he wants an investigation, not a whitewash of the Abu G-Rape scandals. And surprise, the biggie chickenhawks say it will be a "distraction"? Huh? Maintaining Good Order and Discipline is now a distraction?

Warner says his committee has a "solemn responsibility" to discover what went wrong and to "make sure it never, never happens again." But some conservatives are angry about the high-profile televised hearings, saying the prisoner-abuse issue is overblown and threatens to undermine the United States' primary mission in Iraq.
...
"I think he should stop the hearings at this point; we've heard enough," said Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), a committee member. "We have a war to win, and we need to keep our talents concentrated on winning the war as opposed to prisoner treatment."

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) complained that Warner and other Senate members have become "mesmerized by cameras." Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was irked when Warner, in a departure from normal committee practice, decided to put all abuse-inquiry witnesses -- including the secretary -- under oath, according to Senate sources.
...
Friends say Warner -- a sailor in World War II, a Marine during the Korean War and secretary of the Navy before he came to the Senate in 1979 -- is motivated by a strong belief that the reputations of both the military and the Senate are at stake unless they get to the bottom of the scandal.
...
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), another committee member, has expressed concern that the hearing may be "a real distraction from trying to win the war, especially at this most fragile time." House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) also suggested a lower profile for the prisoner-abuse issue, saying, "We should not allow it to distract us from the war at hand."

Even rabid kool-aid consumer Lindsay Graham is in favor of the investigation ... ooops, silly me, he's an AF vet (a JAG). Guess he doesn't want the military to be totally disgraced like the ChickenHawks do. Duncan Hunter was an Army Airborne guy '69-'71...it sort of surprises me that he would fall in line with the ChickenHawks on this one...but, whatever.

Oh, and I love this shot at you-know-who:

Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the president's Democratic challenger, has mentioned Warner as a possible defense secretary, and there has been speculation that he may be in Bush's Cabinet list for a second term. But Warner dismissed such talk, saying running the Pentagon is a job for a younger person.

I guess that the Neocon Moron Brigade over at the Pentagram must have been figuring that the Senators and all their staffers were also Pre-K rejects. Seems that somehow they "forgot" to turn over about TWO THOUSAND pages of the Abu G-Rape investigation materials.

The Pentagon said Wednesday that it inadvertently failed to give the Senate Armed Services Committee a full copy of the 6,000-page Army investigation into the prison abuse scandal.

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said no critical information was withheld and that Defense Department would submit the missing documents to the panel.
...
"The perception that was left was unfortunate, which is that we were somehow trying to withhold something from the committee. That was certainly not the case," he said.

For annextra speshul treet if you foller the link, there mebbe a picture of Miz Hump-a-Lump with a Speshul Mesage for yew...she needs more Valium (or Xanax). I guess that they are keeping her off the sedation until after November...so she can tell us about her four years as a teacher and librarian, when she wasn't running over boyfriends. She say "edumaction is my pashion...that's why I married a Moe-ron".

Hey, really we just invaded Iraq to...put some freedom on your families. No really. And if that doesn't work, then we'll lock your frickin' family of malcontents up. And Shit. No, Reeeealy.

U.S. troops wanted Jeanan Moayad's father. When they couldn't find him, they took her husband in his place.

Dhafir Ibrahim has been in U.S. custody for nearly four months. Moayad insists that he is being held as a bargaining chip, and military officials have told her that he will be released when her father surrenders. Her father is a scientist and former Baath party member who fled to Jordan soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime
...
U.S. officials deny that there is a systematic practice of detaining relatives to pressure Iraqi fugitives into surrendering. "The coalition does not take hostages," said a senior military official who asked not to be named. "Relatives who might have information about wanted persons are sometimes detained for questioning, and then they are released. There is no policy of holding people as bargaining chips."

But Iraqi human rights groups say they have documented dozens of cases similar to Moayad's, in which family members who are not accused of any crimes have been detained for weeks or even months and told that they would be released only when a wanted relative surrenders to U.S. forces.
...
The senior U.S. military official declined to discuss the detention of al-Douri's relatives, saying it is a "special case with very unusual circumstances." In the past, U.S. officials had likened the detentions to those of a material witness who is held for questioning.
...
The tactic, Moayad said, reminded her of Hussein's regime. "The Americans promised us that they would bring democracy and freedom. They talked about the prisoners in Saddam's time, and we expected them to do something better," she said. "But now they're doing the same thing, or even worse."

It's no wonder that the 1600 Crew went looking for lawyers like that putz at UC Berkeley to try and find loopholes in the Geneva Convention for them. Well, when regime change happens this year maybe handing a few of these Neocon asshats over to the International Criminal Courts might improve our image in the world, not to mention serving the cause of Justice ... you know that thing that the Patriot Act was put there to prevent...

Wolfie, Perle, Feith, Rummy and Preznit Shitcher-Drawz in the Criminal Dock at the Hague together after Viceroy Jerry rolls over on them. Well, a Fish can dream, right?

Reports have been rattling around for a few days now that there will some type of terrorist attack here in the US this summer. However, law enforcement officials have been loathe to raise the "threat levels" again, I guess it's the boy crying wolf thing. According to several stories, an unnamed Al-Qaida leader wants to kill four million Americans to even the score for some weird perceived injustices agains Islam.

The United States is al-Qaida's prime target in a war it sees as a death struggle between civilizations, the report said. An al-Qaida leader has said 4 million Americans will have to be killed "as a prerequisite to any Islamic victory," the survey said.

"Al-Qaida's complaints have been transformed into religious absolutes and cannot be satisfied through political compromise," the study said.

The London-based institute is considered the most important security think tank outside the United States. Its findings on al-Qaida's expanding structure and growing support by allied terrorist networks around the world track with similar assessments from governments and other experts.
...
Al-Qaida is the common ideological and logistical hub for disparate local affiliates, and bin Laden's charisma, presumed survival and elusiveness enhance the organization's iconic drawing power," it said.

In 2001 President Bush said he wanted Osama bin Laden "Dead or Alive." In 2002 at a press conference Bush said, "I don't know where he is, I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not important."

The Grey Lady's Mea Maxima (sorta) Culpa. They admit that they were not as ... professional in a Journalistic sense as they might have (should have) been. Really? I'm shocked. Check it out:

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.
...
...It is still possible that chemical or biological weapons will be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along with the administration, were taken in. And until now we have not reported that to our readers.
...
The informant also claimed that Iraq had sent unconventional weapons to Syria and had been cooperating with Al Qaeda — two claims that were then, and remain, highly controversial. But the tone of the article suggested that this Iraqi "scientist" — who in a later article described himself as an official of military intelligence — had provided the justification the Americans had been seeking for the invasion.
...
We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.

When that starts happening, I might believe that they are serious about their contrition...until then, it looks like another smokescreen to buy time for their PR flackery for Fearless Leader to continue. Time to put up or shut up boys and girls. Until then it's: "All the Craven Apologies Fit to Utter"

Sullivan keeps whining that anti-war critics "continue with their relentless negativism", that we're all Nattering Nabobs of Negativism. I guess that when he got his bitch-slapping from Juan Cole, he forgot to read this small piece of work from General Anthony Zinni, USMC (ret), a guy who has seen the elephant and is not afraid to take on the 1600 Crew.

Well, I want to be clear. I don’t have a plan. I have some ideas or thoughts in each of the areas: political, economic, security. This is… I gave you sort of the Whitman’s Sampler of a few ideas. I don’t think…the worst thing we could do is create another U.S. plan. There are a lot of good ideas out there.

Thanks to reader Bruce Webb for the pointer to GEN Zinni's speech

How's this grab you for a lede in a newspaper story?

Despite the growing chaos in Iraq and the recent barrage of bad publicity about the war there, President Bush indicated Monday that he was willing to pay almost any price to implement his vision of the country's future.

In what has to be the most suck-up, sycophantic rendering of verbage since Joseph Goebbels gave speeches for the Nazis in Nuremberg, Sullivan pens a paen to Fearless Leader that will stand as one of his finest pieces of Hackery ever.

Shorter Version: Bush is responsible for Nothing. Bad Shit Happens To Good People.

It's worth a read to try and decipher whether this was a reproduction of a Rovian Blast-Fax or the Original Version. All the bad things that happened in Iraq are not the fault of anyone in the 1600 Crew. The war was entirely justified because well, Saddam Bad, America Good. Fighting the Ba'athists was like premature ejaculation; the end came too fast, and now we're getting burned by the 'afterglow'. The lack of Post-war planning was not the fault of the 1600 Crew. And the Media want the whole charade to fail, because they want the 1600 Crew occupation of DC and America to end (evidence to the contrary notwithstanding). Saddam, well, he might have done business with Al-Qaeda, because Sully thinks that it might have happened, completely disregarding the fact that Saddam brooked no rivals in or out of Iraq for his own imperial intentions in mid-east politics.

If his readers pay money to read this apologist, ignorant shit, then I'd love for some of them to send their money to me, Roger Ailes, Atrios, Waremouse, Logan Circle Guy, Jesse at Pandagon and of course the incomparable SullyWatch (sorry Bob/DH); we'd be more than happy to take free money from morons and declare it at tax-time. We can make shit up too, and it would seem far more credible.

In a discussion transcript from a Washington Post on-line discussion about Commander Codpiece's script-reading tonight:

Peter Slevin: To my ear, there was nothing new in the speech, except perhaps the announcement that the United States would build a new maximum security prison at Abu Ghraib. The speech was short on details and certainly offered no change in course.

The speech seemed to me an attempt to regain the moral high ground and project a sense of confidence about a mission that has gone badly awry.

President Bush repeatedly contrasted the behavior and ambitions of the United States and its foes, saying it was a contest of "liberty and life" against "tyranny and murder."

Is it just me, or is this a 1600 Crew fantasy?

The White House asked the media on Monday to "show respect" for President Bush's twin daughters as they emerge from private life as students to work for their father's re-election campaign
...
They will do an interview and photo spread for Vogue magazine and then work at Bush's campaign headquarters in the Washington suburbs.

Die hard warrior and part-time strategist Scott McClellan today spoke up in a spirited defense of the 1600 Crew. Drawing on his extensive military background and hundreds of days deployed with the 101st Keyboard Commandos, McClellan had this to say about retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni:

"I recognize he's a retired general who certainly stated his position," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. "But the president looks to those active commanders who are working to implement our policies and build a safer world to make America more secure."

Before his retirement, Zinni drew up invasion plans that called for deploying 300,000 troops, more than double the roughly 140,000 now in Iraq.

In the latest wave of stupididity...the 1600 Crew goes on an all-out offensive against ... digital media.

Mobile phones fitted with digital cameras have been banned in US army installations in Iraq on orders from Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Britain's The Business newspaper reported yeterday.

Quoting a Pentagon source, the paper said the US Defence Department believes that some of the damning photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were taken with camera phones.

"Digital cameras, camcorders and cellphones with cameras have been prohibited in military compounds in Iraq," it said, adding that a "total ban throughout the US military" is in the works.

So there you Digital Media Terrorists!!!

Well, once they could call themselves journalists...now media whores seems to be a much better descriptor for most of them. Survey sez...

National journalists were more likely than a decade ago to say there are too many factual errors in coverage, while local reporters were less inclined to say that was a problem.

A majority of journalists of all backgrounds and different type of operations said they do not think plagiarism is more widespread now, despite widely publicized cases in the past year.

The survey found a reduction in the number of journalists who think news reporters are too cynical and many now think they are too timid.

More than half of national journalists say the press has not been critical enough of President Bush. Local journalists were about evenly split between thinking the press is not critical enough or is fair in its treatment of the president.

But he would have failed at that too...Fearless Leader is such a loser, when he goes back the UN they'll listen politely and then laugh their asses off in private.

President Bush prepared Sunday for a campaign to rally support at the United Nations about his policies in Iraq, while senior envoys struggled in Baghdad with competing demands by Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds for the top positions of the new caretaker government.

I'm guessing that the real reason there's a June 30th date is so that Eye-Rack-e unpleasantness does not interfere with the bold brush-cutting of the annual August Crawfordfest. I mean, after all, once a coward always a coward right? It's easier to run away and cut some brush another day, or am I wrong?

The 1600 Crew does predictably well at raising money from the Wall Street Fat Cats...so well that one of their number at Merrill Lynch is a Pio-nanger or whatever.

At Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., a suggestion from chief executive E. Stanley O'Neal is not to be taken lightly.

O'Neal eliminated 24,000 jobs, froze pay and steadily pushed out competitors for executive power, including colleagues who had championed his rise up the corporate ladder. "Ruthless," O'Neal has reportedly told colleagues, "isn't always bad."

So it came as no surprise that when O'Neal sent letters to senior executives at Merrill Lynch in early June asking them to contribute to President Bush's reelection campaign, the response was prompt and generous.

Between June 12 and June 30 of last year, the Bush-Cheney campaign was inundated with 157 checks from Merrill Lynch executives and at least 20 from their spouses; 140 checks were for the maximum allowed by law: $2,000.

Total take generated by the O'Neal letter: $279,750 in less than three weeks.

Who really needed the EPA to be honest anyway? Damn Bureaucrats.

Asked why so many of the top 10 employers of contributors are Wall Street securities firms, Scott Stanzel, spokesman for the Bush-Cheney '04 Campaign, said, "We are proud that we have over 1 million donors to the Bush-Cheney campaign representing every county in every state in this nation."

Altogether, personnel at these seven top 10 firms have given Bush $2.33 million, or a fifth of the $12.14 million from employees of the finance and insurance sector that has flowed to Bush this election cycle.

For a dose of rootin-tootin shootin, Definate Dem, rasslin-lovin commentary go check out the blog of frequent commenter The Mullet. He's more than just a haircut...and worth a read, I think.

Fearless Leader comes to town a-riding on pony...stuck a feather in his ass and called it Denny Hastert. Just kidding. Just because Doughboy Denny has never passed up the buffet table, is no reason to get down on him when we get to point out another 1600 Crew lie...

Iraqis are ready to "take the training wheels off" and assume political power from the U.S.-led coalition, President Bush said Thursday as his administration began to roll out a rough plan for the June 30 transition of authority.
...
Bush's job-approval ratings have slumped to the lowest levels of his presidency, dragged down by bloodshed in Iraq. He sought to reassure lawmakers that despite the polls, he is eager for his re-election fight.

In remarks released by the White House on Thursday, Bush called the handover "a complete passage of sovereignty." He did not mention in the interview with Al Zaman newspaper, conducted Tuesday, that troops from the United States and other countries will be in Iraq indefinitely.
...
But White House spokesman Scott McClellan said simply that Brahimi's candidates would be the people who take the reins of government. "I expect they will be the caretaker government," he said.

Oh, and let me take this opportunity to pile on Denny "Doughboy" Hastert, a true ignoramus, and a man not fit to lick John McCain's shoes. Eat me, you pusillanimous little punk. There, now I feel better. Digby has the ultimate smackdown.

Go read it.

Gosh could you ever imagine behavior like this from the 1600 Crew?

A series of Justice Department memorandums written in late 2001 and the first few months of 2002 were crucial in building a legal framework for United States officials to avoid complying with international laws and treaties on handling prisoners, lawyers and former officials say.

The confidential memorandums, several of which were written or co-written by John C. Yoo, a University of California law professor who was serving in the department, provided arguments to keep United States officials from being charged with war crimes for the way prisoners were detained and interrogated. They were endorsed by top lawyers in the White House, the Pentagon and the vice president's office but drew dissents from the State Department.
...
Prof. Detlev Vagts, an authority on international law and treaties at Harvard Law School, said the arguments in the memorandums as described to him "sound like an effort to find loopholes that could be used to avoid responsibility."

Gee, couldn't happen to a nicer guy. The truest Neo Con, convicted embezzler and all around good felon, Ahmed Chalabi. Seems that he's fallen out of favor with his American masters...

A year ago, as U.S. troops swept toward Baghdad, Ahmed Chalabi and about 400 hastily assembled fighters were secretly airlifted into southern Iraq to rally other Iraqis and begin a march toward Baghdad to help topple Saddam Hussein, an operation that won the concurrence of U.S. officials all the way up to Vice President Cheney's office. Chalabi had predicted that he would become Iraq's Spartacus, cutting a wide swath through Iraq and mobilizing vast numbers behind him, according to U.S. officials.
...
"The vast majority of reports of his proximity to and influence on administration policy have been greatly exaggerated," said a senior administration official involved in Iraq policy who knows Chalabi.

One of his aides declared himself "mayor" of Baghdad. His supporters established what U.S. officials called "Chalabi cantons," complete with roadblocks and tolls. And loyalists sent out word that Iraqis should report to the Iraqi National Congress (INC) before returning to work.

His agents were also faster than U.S. troops at getting to Iraq's intelligence headquarters, where they took thousands of sensitive files, which the INC has refused to return to the new intelligence ministry, U.S. officials say. Supporters were implicated in commandeering the property of former Baath Party officials, from homes to upscale cars.
...
"Now it's demonstrable that he told the U.S. government a lot of things that were not true," said Pat Lang, former head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency. At the United Nations last year, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented the U.S. case for war, which included information on mobile labs for the production of chemical or biological weapons based on data from a defector provided by the INCdata that the United States has since conceded were untrue.

But Chalabi, a Shiite Muslim educated at MIT and the University of Chicago, has been unrepentant. "We are heroes in error," he told the Daily Telegraph of London in February. "As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important."

Maybe they'll just quietly hand him over to the Jordanians...trussed up like a Thanksgiving Turkee. How appropriate would that be?

get the feeling that the whole Mess in Mesopotamia would have been a non-starter if the Media had actually done their jobs? Thought so.

There are servicemen and women out there in Iraq as you read this. They have been put there for the most questionable of reasons: the Hubris of an incurious, inarticulate and essentially daddy-fixated, mommy-fearing man. They are doing the best that they can, with in some cases inadequate supplies, armor and other 'niceties' in 90+ degree dusty days only bound to get worse as summer approaches. So how are they being supported in their daily struggle to coexist with a population that's increasingly unsettled and now has more fuel like this to kindle the flames of their resistance?

Previously secret sworn statements by detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq describe in raw detail abuse that goes well beyond what has been made public, adding allegations of prisoners being ridden like animals, sexually fondled by female soldiers and forced to retrieve their food from toilets.

The fresh allegations of prison abuse are contained in statements taken from 13 detainees shortly after a soldier reported the incidents to military investigators in mid-January. The detainees said they were savagely beaten and repeatedly humiliated sexually by American soldiers working on the night shift at Tier 1A in Abu Ghraib during the holy month of Ramadan, according to copies of the statements obtained by The Washington Post.
...
Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, detainee No. 151108, told investigators that when he first arrived at Abu Ghraib last year, he was forced to strip, put on a hood and wear rose-colored panties with flowers on them. "Most of the days I was wearing nothing else," he said in his statement.

Hilas also said he witnessed an Army translator having sex with a boy at the prison. He said the boy was between 15 and 18 years old. Someone hung sheets to block the view, but Hilas said he heard the boy's screams and climbed a door to get a better look. Hilas said he watched the assault and told investigators that it was documented by a female soldier taking pictures.

"The kid was hurting very bad," Hilas said.
...
"Do you pray to Allah?" one asked. "I said yes. They said, '[Expletive] you. And [expletive] him.' One of them said, 'You are not getting out of here health[y], you are getting out of here handicapped. And he said to me, 'Are you married?' I said, 'Yes.' They said, 'If your wife saw you like this, she will be disappointed.' One of them said, 'But if I saw her now she would not be disappointed now because I would rape her.' "

He said the soldiers told him that if he cooperated with interrogators they would release him in time for Ramadan. He said he did, but still was not released. He said one soldier continued to abuse him by striking his broken leg and ordered him to curse Islam. "Because they started to hit my broken leg, I curse my religion," he said. "They ordered me to thank Jesus I'm alive."

The detainee said the soldiers handcuffed him to a bed.

"Do you believe in anything?" he said the soldier asked. "I said to him, 'I believe in Allah.' So he said, "But I believe in torture and I will torture you.' "

The uniformed culprits that need to be examined include the commanders of the MI detachments/units and "men" like Jesus Jerry Boykin, who have been shown to have had some role in this. Rumsfeld not only needs to go, he needs to go to trial for violating the Geneva Convention and it would not be such a stretch to drag Fearless Leader there with him. Think about it; if there were ever a conflict (the Unitarian-Texan cloud being forbid) with say, China or North Korea, they could rightly point to our abrogation of the Geneva Convention with respect to the treatment of any prisoners. How would you feel knowing that even with the Geneva Conventions in place it provided the barest security for American prisoners during WWII with the Japanese, the Korean War with the North Koreans and in Vietnam with the North Vietnamese; now we have said it's not consequential and lived out those words. Again, the 1600 Crew has screwed future generations, for their own hidden agenda, and it's going to hurt a lot of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines someday, but I hope that day never comes.

Sez the Duchess about Juan Cole:

But his biases are so acute I don't trust him an inch.

And by the way, I can't wait to see what lies Commander Codpiece comes up with next week at the Army War College. Whatever it may be, you can be sure that Lap-Dog Sullivan will be watching and rebroadcasting it as "bold" and "farsighted", but as we all know words and deeds are somewhat divergent within the 1600 Crew; just ask anyone not a recipient of their Largese after Fearless Leader has said something nice about them. Nothing will be done, Sullivan will spend about two weeks crowing with triumphalism about his hero's 'vision-thing', Commander Codpiece will see that there's no quick fix, toss away his new toy and Sullivan will again be "so disappointed". My timeline may be off by a few weeks; but by June 30th Sullivan will make up a new award and give it to his hero ... just a guess.

Quoth a Chickenhawk from Texas:

Then Senator John Cornyn of Texas weighed in, suggesting that Mr. Warner, a Navy officer in World War II, a Marine lieutenant in the Korean War and a Navy secretary under Nixon, and Mr. McCain, who lived in a dirt suite at the Hanoi Hilton for five years, were not patriotic. Their "collective hand-wringing," Mr. Cornyn sniffed, could be "a distraction from fighting and winning the war."

Rummy had a dozen Republican senators over to the Pentagon for breakfast on Tuesday, and Mr. Cornyn said the secretary was exasperated by the "all-consuming nature" of the Congressional hearings.

The man who David Plotz of Slate says is widely "considered one of the dumbest members of Congress" chimed in, dumbly. Following up on his inane rant defending the soldiers accused of abuse at Abu Ghraib and whingeing about "humanitarian do-gooders," Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma wondered whether Mr. Warner was trying to help the Democrats with public hearings.

The two would-be hipsters -- Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney -- were aides to the new president, Gerald Ford. At that time Rumsfeld and Cheney were persuading Ford to veto one of the most important Watergate-inspired reforms, an enhanced Freedom of Information Act, designed to guarantee public and media scrutiny of the FBI and other agencies. FOIA, the two aides warned, would take too much power from the executive branch.

This is where I came in...I'm headed back to a dark room before my migraine returns full force. Jeebus.

Love of Money and Power. Seems that if you could get an "exception" you could import beef into the US from Canada, even as the Secretary of Greediculture was saying "No Way, Dudes". Wonder why?

Ms. Veneman, a former food industry lawyer and lobbyist, has former representatives of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and other industry groups among her top staff members.

In the next six months, a total of 33 million pounds of Canadian processed beef flowed to American consumers under a series of undisclosed permits the USDA issued to the meatpackers, permits that remained in effect until a federal judge intervened in April.
...
In her August announcement allowing importation of boneless beef to resume, Veneman said the risk that ground beef might contain the mad cow infection was too great to allow it in. She and her top deputies said ground beef imports would resume only after the agency completed a formal rulemaking process, with public debate.
...
Bullard said few in the meat industry seemed to know that Canadian processed beef and other products that were not on the officially sanctioned list had been coming into the United States since September. The USDA said it could not disclose which American importers had received the permits.
...
In his ruling against the USDA, U.S. District Judge Richard F. Cebull wrote that the agency appeared to be ignoring its own rules and pronouncements.

"The Court is concerned by the manner in which, according to counsel for USDA, USDA has been authorizing imports of virtually all edible bovine meat products, apparently through issuing individual permits, at a time when it was assuring the public that such authorization would take place through the rulemaking process," he wrote on April 26, when he issued a temporary restraining order against the agency.

So how come this happens in an administration where money doesn't buy influence?

To Creekstone Farms manager Bill Fielding, his company's idea does not seem unreasonable. In order to satisfy its very important customers in Japan -- customers the company needs to survive -- Creekstone wants to test for mad cow disease every one of the cattle it slaughters.
...
But there is a big obstacle in the way of Creekstone's mad cow initiative: The U.S. Department of Agriculture will not allow it.
...
USDA officials say that they sympathize with Creekstone and similar operations hurt by the bans imposed by Japan and other nations, but that agreeing to the company's request could imply there is a safety issue with American beef and usher in an era of expensive testing that has no scientific justification.

Really, I wonder if Creekstone ponyed up for the RNC and the 1600 Crew like say Timken or Cintas if they would have problems like this...after all a mere $500,000 invested in food safety would be far better in Political Safety...it keeps the 1600 Crew from having to send it's bagmen around to fuck with you.

There is this whole debate emerging, led by Instahack and others about the nature of the Mess in Mesopotamia. Fine. They were wrong, we were right and that about ends the conversation...but more troubling is this column that Atrios points to by Tony Blankley, somewhat of a force in his own right, having been schooled at the feet of Uber-Neocon Newtie, and much more low-key but very connected in his own right. Sez Tony:

But all this potential capacity for victory can only be brought into full being by a sustained act of collective will. It is heartbreaking, though no longer perplexing, that the president's political and media opposition want the president's defeat more than America's victory. But that is the price we must pay for living in a free country. (Sedition laws almost surely would be found unconstitutional, currently — although things may change after the next terrorist attack in America.)emphasis is mine

Our diversity of opinion makes us who we are...it's served us well for most of our history as a Republic; and now some republicans see it as a crippling liability...we've come so far to have gone nowhere at all...and we even have a "King" George.

I managed to avoid the hospital and all it's 'bad craziness'. Which is a 'good thing'. Damn, HST and Martha in one line...whooda thunk it?

I truly appreciate all your thoughts, good wishes and great advice...

I could not stay in bed much longer, so Mrs. Fish let me get on-line for a few minutes if I promised not to yell, and stayed away from the freepers...

So with all that, I found a couple of things to talk about, and then its back to the 'recovery zone' before they make me take more steroids and triptans....

Been suffering from a killer-bad migraine; the kind that puts me in the hospital, which is what I'm trying to avoid...back later today or tomorrow. Too much good stuff to miss, but I can't even look at the monitor right now.

Thanks, go check out some of the great links in the Pond (ISEbrands.com is a new catch).

Back Later...sorry for the bloggus interruptus.

Preznit Big Bidness has managed to single-handedly begin to crush world-wide equity markets. Hell, he's already driven ours down to its year low, and it's only May.

Stock prices plunged at the opening bell on Monday after a car bomb attack killed the head of the Iraqi Governing Council, raising questions about the planned June 30 transfer of power from coalition forces back to local officials.

...All the major U.S. benchmarks closed at their low points for the year.

Sullivan does not live in a closet, but in our collective living rooms. His recent blog entry bemoans the fact that his book garnered him numerous interviews from the broadcast media including questioning from his old YMCA workout-buddy Anderson Cooper, (what's up with that reference?) but nothing from FOX. I wonder if he's seen this from the Blade:

On a recent trip to New York, I visited a gay bar on the Upper East Side, where I met a familiar-looking man wearing an expensive suit and excessive makeup. After a drink or two, I realized that he was one of the star anchors at Fox News Network, that tool of the conservative right masquerading as a “fair and balanced” news operation.

He wouldn’t admit his identity, only that he “worked for News Corporation,” the parent company of Fox, so I played dumb and let him buy another round of martinis.

At 3 a.m. and after more than a few drinks, the closeted Fox star could barely balance on his bar stool.

His solicitations for a date became more intense and desperate. So I told him I was not single and, “not interested dating anyone in closet,” and left him wobbling on his stool.

The stakes are too great this year for any of us — Democrat, Republican, black, white, famous or infamous — to hide in the closet and grant Bush another four years to pander to his fundamentalist Christian, anti-gay base.

Payback for a Bush victory in 2004 will come from our collective hides: more anti-gay legislation and rhetoric, more bigoted judicial nominees, and undoubtedly one or two (or more) Supreme Court picks.

Anyone living in the closet will deserve a small piece of the blame if Bush is re-elected.

An Army Staff Sergeant is being tried for desertion in a courts-martial in Georgia. He came home from Iraq on a two-week leave, and decided not to go back, but instead seek C.O. status. I have gone on record as saying UA is a bad idea, and the SSGT did not go about making his case the right way and is now paying for it by being courts-martialed. But it makes you wonder, again, how the 1600 Crew has the moral authority to drag any serviceman or woman in front of a court given Fearless Leader's service record.

Maybe SSGT Mejia should have been born into a rich family and gotten his teeth cleaned in that four-month interregnum, then at least he'd be eligible to run for high office and have the adulation of the deluded.

You can get everything, seemingly, on Ebay. Check this out, and read the seller's item description, he's got to be a Democrat.

...Would make a GREAT gift for a retired pilot, future pilot, non-pilot, Rumsfeld or the Govenor of California!

Preznit Jesus Rocks! has managed to cave in to the christo-fascists about everything...and now some of the most conservitard republicans (Duke Cunningham, Nancy Reagan) are questioning the wisdom of blocking stem cell research.

There is a possible cure waiting in the wings for people with juvenile diabetes, Alzheimer’s, ALS, Parkinson’s, heart disease, cancer, as well as spinal-cord injuries. It’s called stem-cell research. At the moment things are stalled at research, just short of moving forward to applying the technology and changing millions of lives. Why? The White House has said it will not release federal funds for embryonic stem-cell research.

On the night of May 8, my mother, Nancy Reagan, was given an award for caregiving at a Beverly Hills fund-raiser for stem-cell research. “We have lost so much time,” she said when accepting her award. “I just can’t bear to lose any more.”

There is something this administration might not have counted on: the determination of the human spirit. When it comes to life and health, and freedom from disease, people will not be deterred. If there is no federal funding, the money will come from other places. Memo to the White House: people will not allow their children to live with juvenile diabetes when there is a potential cure that could free them and restore their bodies to health. My family has watched my father, once called "The Great Communicator," vanish into the shadows of Alzheimer’s; we are only one of many families who know the cruelty of this disease. My mother has taken her sorrow, her loss, and stood up for the one cure that can prevent people in the future from knowing this agony. George W. Bush, though he may want to try, can never stand in the way of people who want to banish the diseases that are stealing so much.

we're in soooo much trouble in Iraq and the Middle East. Read the whole thing...here's an excerpt.

For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp.

The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C.
...
"It was just a personal conviction with me. I've had an impeccable career. I chose to get out. And you know who I blame? I blame the president of the U.S. It's not the grunt. I blame the president because he said they had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie."

How interesting that the Times gives Op-Ed space to Sullivan, to whine about conservatives who won't accept "Gay Marriage" (or "Marriage" as Sullivan calls it). The one person I would not expect to miss the point (sardonic laughter here) about the conservative viewpoint on Gays and Marriage writes as though even Pat Robertson will one day be performing same-sex ceremonies, just because?

He seems to forget that the christo-fascists (even if they have gay friends) would rather die than admit gays are human. The Catholic Church, Sullivans Religious Opiate of 'Choice', an institution famous for coming down on the wrong side of many issues with a sledge hammer, has been whispering sweet little anti-Gay missives in the ears of many politicians and adherants for years. Our gay-basher in Chief is proposing amending our constitution to ensure that these new unions are no more than a footnote in our history.

How can someone purportedly so smart be so dumb? From a Newsweek Article

The new Newsweek poll out this week find increasing acceptance among Americans for same-sex unions as Massachusetts gets set to allow the first legally- recognized same-sex marriages in the nation.

The poll shows that a majority (51%) of adults approve of some form of legal recognition for gay and lesbian couples; 28 percent say they favor full marriage rights, while 23 percent favor civil unions or partnerships but not gay marriage.

Note (this was in my draft and did not survive CTRL-V): and for the record, how about just marriage, no big "M", no Gay, no nothing, just a couple of folks living, loving and being. With the right to celebrate their love and lives, grow old, get divorced, have kids if they choose and have to put up with teenagers...whatever.

When an E-4 can see what highly paid and influential idiots at DoD and elsewhere can not, you have to wonder.

Over the year, some ambitious goals fell by the wayside. Lieutenant Iliff recalled the day he had to cancel elections in December for seats on a neighborhood council in Baghdad. First, the men tried to bar women from voting. Then they mobbed the ballot box. The lieutenant ended up hand-picking three people for the seats.

Whatever government does take root, "I think it'll have to be an Iraqi version of it," he said, adding: "Westernized democracy just won't work. They haven't been taught from a young age to think the way we think in the West. They don't have an understanding of the same rights."

Cpl. Jonathan Torres, 20, of Puerto Rico, echoed that sentiment: "It's going to take a lot longer than they thought it would. Here, people are used to another way of living. They thought they could change it in one or two years. It's going to take a lot longer."